Todd Wasserman explains key performance indicators. Julia Kirby says that if you want to change the world, you should get to bed by 10 p.m. Here are eight easy ways for your business to go green, and Jim Smith explains what your business can learn from the $1 cups at Starbucks. Communicating with energy is one of the five most important business skills. According to an American Express study, 70 percent of entrepreneurs say they purchase and source goods and services from other small businesses. A survey reveals the DNA of America’s small-business owners.

Amanda McCormick wants to know how you are using social media to market your business. Dan Zarrella finds that exclamation points get more retweets but fewer clicks. LinkedIn bans users from promoting prostitution and escort services, but this is not why the social media service annoys Benedict Evans. Christopher Null wonders if Google Plus matters for small businesses.

Red Tape: Deficiencies

The Government Accountability Office finds 60 deficiencies in the Internal Revenue Service’s internal controls, and Jon Stewart weighs in. The Obama administration announces three advanced manufacturing innovation institutes. A survey reveals a lingering uphill battle for the new health care law, but Emily Maltby and Angus Loten wonder whether the law may create new entrepreneurs. Sarah Kliff explains what will happen if you don’t pay the tax penalty, and a small-business owner explains the hard facts of the health care law to employees.

@dansinker – How long does a keynote have to last before it’s considered a hostage situation?

The Week’s Best Quote

Charlie Hamilton shares a few lessons from the lemonade stand: “Successful adults often worked when they were young. They mowed lawns, baby-sat, or had a lemonade stand. Learning how to work hard, provide good customer service, overcome challenges, ask for the sale, and understand the value of a dollar are invaluable life lessons that kids simply can’t get from a textbook.”

This Week’s Question: Would you buy a point-of-sale system from Groupon?

Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa., consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. You can follow him on Twitter.

Consider Shane Gill, a 33-year-old high-school teacher in New York City. He does not have a car. He does not own a home. He is not married. And he is no anomaly: like hundreds of thousands of others in his generation, he has put off such major purchases or decisions in part because of his debts.

Mr. Gill owes about $45,000 in federal student loans, plus another $40,000 to his parents. That investment in his future has led to a secure job with decent pay and good benefits. But it has left him with tremendous financial constraints, as he faces chipping away at the debt for years on end.

“There’s this anxiety: what if I decided I wanted to get married or have children?” Mr. Gill said. “I don’t know how I would. And that adds to the sense of precariousness. There’s a persistent, buzzing kind of toothache around it.”

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in a new study, found that 30-year-olds with student loans were now less likely to have debts like home mortgages than 30-year-olds without student loans — even though most of those with student loans are better educated and can expect to earn more money over their lifetimes. The same pattern holds true for 25-year-olds and car loans.

“It is a new thing, a big social experiment that we’ve accidentally decided to engage in,” said Kevin Carey, the director of the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation, a research group based in Washington. “Let’s send a whole class of people out into their professional lives with a negative net worth. Not starting at zero, but starting at a minus that is often measured in the tens of thousands of dollars. Those minus signs have psychological impact, I suspect. They might have a dollars-and-cents impact in what you can afford, too.”

The weak economy and tight credit standards remain the main culprits preventing young people just establishing themselves from making major purchases. But millions now face putting a substantial share of their take-home pay toward past debts rather than present needs. Student loan debt leaves them with less money for things like clothes and restaurant meals. And it is even more likely to suppress purchases of more expensive items that need to be bought with credit. A poor job market is compounding the problem: the educational debt burden of many so-called millennials has sharply increased even as they are being forced to get by on significantly less income than the previous generation — a decline of about 15 percent in real terms since 2000, with much of that drop coming from the recession.

According to calculations by the Pew Research Center, the measure of debt to income for households under the age of 35 has ballooned to about 1.5-to-1 in 2010 from about 1-to-1 in 2001. The composition of that debt has shifted, too: more is tied to student debts, and less to homes. “Having a lot of student loan debt makes it harder to qualify for a mortgage and harder to save for a down payment,” said Jed Kolko, the chief economist at Trulia.

Student loan debt is not only constraining young adults, but also, at least in the near term, holding back the recovery itself, some economists say. The shadows might remain even as the economy picks up, by making young workers more cautious when it comes to decisions about their careers and their finances. Millennials might end up buying less expensive homes or more often choosing to rent than previous generations.

“The debt is shifting how much young people can spend, and it can also be a powerful psychological thing as well,” said Selma Hepp, an economist at the California Association of Realtors.

On the other side of the equation, many college graduates now in their 20s and early 30s should eventually be able to make up for lost ground. Students who take on debt to pay for higher education commit themselves to paying off huge sums, but they usually lift their lifetime earnings by substantial amounts. And they are in a better position to insulate themselves against economic bad times, given the profound rewards the job market provides to the college-educated.

Indeed, the economy is far more punishing to workers without a college degree. The college-educated earn, on average, 80 percent more than those who only completed high school, a premium that has widened over the last 30 years. Unemployment rates for the less educated are higher, too.

For most young workers, gaining a college degree remains well worth it in the long run, even if it delays some purchases in the near term. “For an individual going to college and ending up with a lot of debt — you’re still better off,” said Chris G. Christopher of the forecasting firm IHS Global Insight. There might, however, be a slice of young workers who paid huge sums for degrees that prove less valuable on the job market, saddled by a debt burden that could end up holding them back for decades.

Mr. Gill said his education remained a vital investment, even if the debt overhang has for now put white picket fences or a condo with a gleaming view out of reach. “Sometimes I think: ‘What if I were to buy an apartment?’ ” he said. “It is like asking: ‘What am I going to do when I first land on the moon? What’s the first thought that I will have when I see Earth from outer space?’ ”

LONDON — As the sovereign debt crisis has slammed Europe, Cinven has had to get creative to finance buyouts.

When the London-based private equity firm wanted to buy CPA Global this year for $1.5 billion, Cinven looked beyond banks, the usual source of money. Along with debt from HSBC and JPMorgan Chase, it secured almost $200 million of higher-interest loans from nontraditional lenders. It also had to spend roughly $600 million of its own cash.

“The debt markets have been challenging since 2007,” said Matthew Sabben-Clare, a partner at Cinven. “There’s a degree of selectivity by the banks over geographies and certain industries. Banks are more regionally focused than before.”

Given the tight credit, most firms are having to put up more capital to get deals done. Cash now accounts for more than 50 percent of the average European buyout, according to the data provider S..P. Capital I.Q. Five years ago, that number was 33 percent. In the United States, cash represents 38 percent of the average buyout, mainly because firms have access to a variety of financing options, like capital markets.

Private equity firms “are having to widen the net to find the loan financing they need,” said Kristian Orssten, head of European high-yield and loan capital markets at JPMorgan Chase in London. “Many lenders in Europe are getting to grips with their own funding challenges.”

The financing troubles for buyouts are reflected in the weak deal-making environment.

Although firms are raising money to buy distressed assets in Europe, many have remained on the sidelines as the debt crisis continues. So far this year, European acquisitions by private equity firms have totaled $23.2 billion, a 38 percent decline from the same period in 2011, according to Thomson Reuters.

Firms have pulled some deals altogether, fearing that asset prices could fall even further. After months of negotiations, Blackstone and BC Partners dropped their $3.2 billion bid for the frozen-food company Iglo after failing to come to terms with its private equity owner, Permira, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter who declined to speak publicly.

In good times, European buyout firms relied heavily on cheap bank lending. Flush with cash, the Continent’s financial institutions provided almost 80 percent of financing on deals, often keeping the debt on their own balance sheets instead of selling it off to other investors.

But as the debt crisis worsened, banks curbed their lending in an effort to meet stricter capital requirements, which penalize firms for holding risky investments like debt connected to private equity deals. Firms like Deutsche Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland have sold loans at a discount to other investors to shed unwanted assets.

Even when banks are willing to finance deals, they are limiting their bets. Local banks are focusing mostly on deals in their home countries, and they are often willing to finance only a portion of the buyouts.

As a result, private equity firms are often tapping multiple lenders, even when the costs of a buyout are less than $1 billion. To finance its £465 million ($749 million) acquisition of the British company Mercury Pharma, Cinven capitalized on its 20-year relationships with certain banks, securing £235 million of financing from a consortium of firms, including Lloyds Banking Group.

With banks being selective, private equity firms have had to tap other markets.

High-yield debt investors, in search of better yields, have been receptive. The European private equity firm Apax issued almost $1 billion of high-yield bonds in February as part of its $2.1 billion acquisition of the telecommunications company Orange Switzerland. Intelsat, one of the world’s largest satellite operators, owned by a BC Partners-led group, raised $1.2 billion this year in an effort to refinance its debt.

“The high-yield market in Europe is exploding,” said a partner from a leading European private equity firm, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It’s attracting a lot of institutional investors who are chasing high returns.” The amount of European high-yield bonds connected to investments from private equity firms has risen 49 percent, to $13.5 billion, since 2007, according to the data provider Dealogic.

Private equity firms are also stepping in to fill the void. The Scandinavian firm EQT Partners turned to a consortium of financial players, including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, for around $510 million of mezzanine financing for its $2.3 billion acquisition of the German medical supplies company BSN Medical in June.

“As bank funding has become more expensive, it has opened up an opportunity for new types of financing,” said Sachin Date, head of private equity for Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa at the accounting firm Ernst Young in London.

But such debt carries its own set of risks. Generally, loans from nontraditional lenders carry higher interest rates, which can be costly for companies, especially in the current economic conditions. If the financial burden became too high, it could force borrowers to default on their loans and exacerbate the region’s woes.

“The crisis has hit much harder than people had expected,” said Nicolas de Nazelle, a managing partner at the private equity adviser Triago in Paris.